The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale (christmas read aloud .TXT) 📕

As soon as the second chain broke, Davy went up on the fore-yard and cut the gaskets of the foresail. The schooner grounded in the trough of sea, but when she rose the foresail was down, and she paid off before the wind. The shore was about a mile, or a mile and a half distant, and she took the beach right abreast of a sheep yard, where her wreck now lies. The men got ashore in safety, but all the cargo was lost.

A tent was pitched on shore near the wreck, but as there was no vessel in the bay by which they could return to Launceston, the four men, Captain Mills, D. Fermaner, Charles Ferris, and Richard Jennings, on December 31st, 1837, set sail in a whaleboat for Port Philip. Davy had stolen Jennings from the 'Rhoda' brig at Launceston, when seamen were scarce. He was afterwards a pilot at Port Philip, and was buried at Williamstown.

The whaleboat reached Port Philip on January 3rd, 1838, having got through the Rip on the night of the 2nd. Ferris was the only man of the crew who had been in before, he having gone in with Batman, in the 'Rebecca' cutter, Captain Baldwin. Baldwin was afterwards before the mast in the 'Elizabeth' schooner; he was a clever man, but fond of drink.

The whaleboat anchored off Portsea, but the men did not land for fear of the blacks.

At daylight Davy landed to look for water, but could not find any; and there were only three pints in the water-bag. The wind being from the north, the boat was pulled over to Mud Island, and the men went ashore to make tea with the three pints of water. Davy walked about the island, and found a rookery of small mackerel-gulls and a great quantity of their eggs in the sand. He broke a number of them, and found that the light-coloured eggs were good, and that the dark ones had birds in them. He took off his shirt, tied the sleeves together, bagged a lot of the eggs, and carried them back to the camp. Mills broke the best of them into the great pot, and the eggs and water mixed together and boiled made about a quart for each man.

After breakfast the wind shifted to the southward, and the 'Henry' brig, from Launceston, Captain Whiting, ran in, bound to Point Henry with sheep; but before Mills and his men could get away from Mud Island the brig had passed. They pulled and sailed after her, but did not overtake her until she arrived off the point where Batman first settled, now called Port Arlington; at that time they called the place Indented Heads.

When the whaleboat came near the brig to ask for water, two or three muskets were levelled at the men over the bulwarks, and they were told to keep off, or they would be shot. At that time a boat's crew of prisoners had escaped from Melbourne in a whale boat, and the ship-wrecked men were suspected as the runaways. But one of the crew of the 'Henry', named Jack Macdonald, looked over the side, and seeing Davy in the boat, asked him what they had done with the schooner 'Thistle', and they told him they had lost her at Port Fairy.

Captain Whiting asked Macdonald if he knew them, and on being informed that they were the captain and crew of the schooner 'Thistle', he invited them on board and supplied them with a good dinner. They went on to Point Henry in the brig, and assisted in landing the sheep.

Batman was at that time in Melbourne. Davy had seen him before in Launceston. After discharging the sheep the brig proceeded to Gellibrand's Point, and as Captain Whiting wanted to go up to Melbourne, the men pulled him up the Yarra in their whaleboat. Fawkner's Hotel at that time was above the site of the present customs House, and was built with broad paling. Mills and Whiting stayed there that night, Davy and the other two men being invited to a small public-house kept by a man named Burke, a little way down Little Flinders Street, where they were made very comfortable.

Next day they went back to the brig 'Henry', and started for Launceston.

In May, 1838, Davy was made master of the schooner 'Elizabeth', and took in her a cargo of sheep, and landed them at Port Fairy. The three old convicts whom Griffiths had sent there along with his father Jonathan, had planted four or five acres of potatoes at a place called Goose Lagoon, about two miles behind the township. The crop was a very large one, from fifteen to twenty tons to the acre, and Davy had received orders to take in fifty tons of the potatoes, and to sell them in South Australia. He did so, and after four days' passage went ashore at the port, offered the potatoes for sale, and sold twenty tons at 22 pounds 10 shillings per ton. On going ashore again next morning, he was offered 20 pounds per ton for the remainder, and he sold them at that price.

On the same day the 'Nelson' brig, from Hobarton, arrived with one hundred tons of potatoes, but she could not sell them, as Davy had fully stocked the market. He was paid for the potatoes in gold by the two men who bought them.

He went up to the new city of Adelaide. All the buildings were of the earliest style of architecture, and were made of tea-tree and sods, or of reeds dabbed together with mud. The hotels had no signboards, but it was easy to find them by the heaps of bottles outside. Kangaroo flesh was 1s. 6d. a pound, but grog was cheap. Davy was looking for a shipmate named Richard Ralph, who was then the principal architect and builder in the city. He found him erecting homes for the immigrants out of reeds and mud. He was paid 10 pounds or 12 pounds for each building. He was also hunting kangaroo and selling meat. He was married to a lady immigrant, and on the whole appeared to be very comfortable and prosperous. Davy gave the lady a five-shilling piece to go and fetch a bottle of gin, and was surprised when she came back bringing two bottles of gin and 3s. change. In the settlement the necessaries of life were dear, but the luxuries were cheap. If a man could not afford to buy kangaroo beef and potatoes, he could live sumptuously on gin. Davy walked back to the port the same evening, and next day took in ballast, which was mud dug out among the mangroves.

He arrived at Launceston in four days, and then went as coasting pilot of the barque 'Belinda', bound to Port Fairy to take in oil for London. The barque took in 100 head of cattle, the first that were landed at Port Fairy. He then went to Port Philip, and was employed in lightering cargo up the Yarra, and in ferrying between Williamstown and the beach now called Port Melbourne. He took out the first boatman's licence issued, and has the brass badge, No. 1, still. Vessels at that time had to be warped up the Yarra from below Humbug Reach, as no wind could get at the topsails, on account of the high tea-tree on the banks.


OUT WEST IN 1849.

I did not travel as a capitalist, far from it. I went up the Mississippi as a deck passenger, sleeping at night sometimes on planks, at other times on bags of oats piled on the deck about six feet high. The mate of a Mississippi boat is always a bully and every now and then he came along with a deck-hand carrying a lamp, and requested us to come down. He said it was "agen the rules of the boat to sleep on oats"; but we kept on breaking the rules as much as possible.

Above the mouth of the Ohio the river bank on the Missouri side is high, rocky, and picturesque. I longed to be the owner of a farm up there, and of a modest cottage overlooking the Father of Waters. I said, "If there's peace and plenty to be had in this world, the heart that is humble might hope for it here," and then the very first village visible was called "Vide Poche." It is now a suburb of St. Louis.

I took a passage on another boat up the Illinois river. There was a very lordly man on the lower deck who was frequently "trailing his coat." He had, in fact, no coat at all, only a grey flannel shirt and nankeen trousers, but he was remarkably in want of a fight, and anxious to find a man willing to be licked. He was a desperado of the great river. We had heard and read of such men, of their reckless daring and deadly fights; but we were peaceful people; we had come out west to make a living, and therefore did not want to be killed. When the desperado came near we looked the other way.

There was a party of five immigrant Englishmen sitting on their luggage. One of them was very strongly built, a likely match for the bully, and a deck-hand pointing to him said:

"Jack, do you know what that Englishman says about you?"

"No, what does he say?"

"He says he don't think you are of much account with all your brag. Reckons he could lick you in a couple of minutes."

Uttering imprecations, Jack approached the Englishman, and dancing about the deck, cleared the ring for the coming combat.

"Come on, you green-horn, and take your gruel. Here's the best man on the river for you. You'll find him real grit."

The stranger sat still, said he was not a fighting man, and did not want to quarrel with anybody.

Jack grew more ferocious than ever, and aimed a blow at the peaceful man to persuade him to come on. He came on suddenly. The two men were soon writhing together on the guard deck, and I was pleased to observe the desperado was undermost. The Englishman was full of fear, and was fighting for his life. He was doing it with great earnestness. He was grasping the throat of his enemy tightly with both hands, and pressing his thumbs on the wind-pipe. We could see he was going to win in his own simple way, without any recourse to science, and he would have done so very soon had he not been interrupted. But as Jack was growing black in the face, the other Englishmen began to pull at their mate, and tried to unlock his grip on Jack's throat. It was not easy to do so. He held on to his man to the very last, crying out: "Leave me alone till I do for him. Man alive, don't you know the villain wants to murder me?"

The desperado lay for a while gulping and gasping on his bed of glory, unable to rise. I observed patches of bloody skin hanging loose on both sides of his neck when he staggered along the deck towards the starboard sponson.

There was peace for a quarter of an hour. Then Jack's voice was